EIP-4844: An Optimistic Bet on Rollup Scalability

EIP-4844 (protodanksharding) is on the rise. With its development, memes, and community support, it's anticipated as the next big upgrade to Ethereum. But what is it really? In a nutshell, it's a new transaction type that makes it easy to write cheap but ephemeral data on L1. The data, represented as blobs, relies on some nifty new cryptography to ensure that it is available long enough for L2 use. There are plenty of resources on that topic. Here, we’ll cover the overall effort to push EIP-4844.

Ethereum Tightening More Than Fed

THE FED HASN’T TIGHTENED MUCH

The different types of ZK-EVMs

Special thanks to the PSE, Polygon Hermez, Zksync, Scroll, Matter Labs and Starkware teams for discussion and review.

The future of maximal extractable value

In the past year, the phenomenon of maximal extractable value (MEV; formerly known as miner extractable value) has captured the public consciousness, in part because of the apparent high level of technical skill required to extract MEV and in part due to the lucrative nature of successful MEV extraction. However, the discussion of MEV is often confused and imprecise, despite the increasingly critical role that MEV plays in blockchain ecosystems. With total extracted MEV plausibly in the billions of dollars (600M in tracked MEV on Ethereum mainnet alone via MEV-Explore), it is unsurprising that the bulk of MEV dialogue focuses on the profits of MEV extractors; however, the scope, evolution, and management of MEV are far-reaching topics with potentially existential consequences for blockchain security in the very long term.